ongoing-

Psycho-geographical Dystopia

parasol, newcastle 2008 (arson), 2008

Assemblage of documentation/performance/video/photography

MAP newcastle, 2008

This piece takes as its starting point the Situationst International’s notion of the Derive: that is to pass through ones urban environment mapping the ‘psycho-geographical’ contours of the city by disregarding the usual considerations of work and leisure, instead allowing oneself to drift through the space, marking what is desirable in the terrain, allowing chance encounters to occur naturally. Through these actions the SI sought to create a positively defined utopia within the existent urban landscape: an environment with which the protagonists where completely familiar and engaged.

house, leeds, 2006 (murder) x 1, 2008

The aim of this piece is not merely to create a negative view of the city but rather to move closer to an objective utopia; one based not on subjective affirmation, which can be infinitely unreliable (due in part to a multitude of generated societal signifiers of an externally imposed happiness), but a rather a negatively defined analysis reflecting the immense paradigmatic shift that has occurred since the SI first undertook such mapping: the lowered aspirations of a society psychically under siege from within. Daily life for many consists of navigating between islands of safety, at a time when city centres are pedestrianised companies simultaneously market hermetically sealed rooms for possible ‘emergencies’, these ‘panic rooms’ function in exactly the same way as the bomb shelter once did, the fundamental difference being: that previously the perceived threat was external to our environment now the danger integral to the urban terrain: from knife wielding youths to domestic suicide bombers. The societal neurosis has turned inwards, a cannibalising fear cultivating a belief that total internal security is possible (an aspiration compatible with a community defending itself against external enemies but quixotic at best in the absence of that enemy, impossible without an accompanying loss of freedom.)

bus-stop, leeds 1994 (assault), 2008

This social anxiety is in itself not new but whereas we once had a moral framework within which to set this internal menace, and more importantly a means of explaining and transcending it, we are now trapped in a cycle of perpetual internal crises; the dream of negative freedom is incapable of providing positive social cohesion and the lack of correlation between technical development and greater unity only further dislocation within the consuming unit. The cycle completes as the transgressors coalesce into a single faceless mass of potential peril as simultaneously we become less capable of identifying with them. Our desire for a positive morality and the dialectical reality of a society that aspires to both self interest and social conscience trigger a reactionary response, the threatening individual/individuals/groups become inseparable from their actions: automaton, signifiers. Without any framework the crimes commited by ‘our own’ confound any satisfactory explanation and so those individuals are stripped of any humanity and become simply machines youth with a knife becomes knife with a youth, suicide bomber becomes suicide bomb.

phone, leeds 2008, 2008

The suicide bomb unlike its atomic cousin becomes a ‘personal weapon’ no longer do we have the comfort of our own demise being equivalent to a nuclear Armageddon, low intensity warfare reduces the western consumer to the status of lone victim. Our deaths made subjective; and in the end meaningless, as the threat becomes both microcosmic and pervasive its ramification is magnified: not only physical loss of life but psychical obsolescence.

single magpie, newcastle 2007 (sorrow), 2008

As our fate becomes detached from wider context, so our desires and their consummation are dependant not on the surrounding environment but rather on external mediators, the role of the city is one of non-intrusion and our interactions with it negatively defined. We feel unable to impact the urban landscape and so our expectations of it are lowered, as the city is further stratified the boundaries of the safe or the desirous are often reduced to their corporate signifiers ‘nothing bad happens in starbucks’. It is because of the unreliable nature of a positively defined city that a more reliable cartography than the classic psycho-geographical approach is required.

glove on cow shit, 2008

Becoming man

this project will take part over the year, commencing: 27/6/08. on that date the artist will start administering a daily dose of the testosterone pre-cursor ‘tribulus terrestris’, in tandem with the taking of this medication nyahoe will embark on a series of works aimed at the reinstatement of utopian vision into the contemporary sphere (see below). it is hoped that this project will produce not only a new and revitalized masculinity; positioned outside dominant paridigmatic prisons of maleness, a template for a gender-political practice independent of the current dialectic. BM is the culmination of a sieries of works (available in framed packs) that have attempted to synthesize a viable male identity: Gitanes man (2006), I’m more catholic than you (2006), pimp (2001-02), gear (1999-2005). [an additional project pre-dating those listed may be available subject to legal advice.]

28/06/08 3:58pm

28/07/08 3:59am

after initial administration no immediate effect noticeable: possible contra-indication with non prescribed medication temporary.

25/07/08

potentially worrying developments: rash appeared on face (this has now cleared), lost sensation in bottom lip (this seems unrelated to rash. intermittently terrified at the prospect of brain illness.)

28/07/08

have concluded that object above: now found in many urinals are in fact an attempt at creating a male cervix, the positioning of these devices in the bottom of mens urinals is indicative of both juvenile perception of female reproductive anatomy and allusion to the pissoirs possibility for autonomous male sexuality. i am undecided as to the significance of spitting, pissing and extiguishing cigarettes on this surrogate organ.

Fine

we can know offer you a series of works resulting from a continuing project of post action performative practice (PAP). the documentation of these performances exists as legal notices and fines along with photographic evidence: these come in framed tryptic packs and are priced according to the duration of the piece (at artists union rates), the cost of the fine and the need to pay other performers (police, lawyers etc) at their own hourly rate. in the event of incarceration due to none payment each day will be priced at 8hrs artist rate excluding weekends.

urinating on a police station (6hrs+£100 fine + 2x police 2hrs approx.) 2008

serge gainsbourg-smoking (£50 +1 hr) 2007